<historickém městem roku 2021 se staly Boskovice>Historic Town of the Year 2021 became Boskovice</historickém městem roku 2021 se staly Boskovice>

Boskovice – The historical town of the year 2021 has become Boskovice in the South Moravian Region. The award is a reward for the best use of funds for the restoration of monuments from the Ministry of Culture's program. The award, accompanied by a prize of one million crowns for further care of monuments, was received today at Prague's Žofín by Boskovice's mayor Jaroslav Dohnálek.

"It's a birthday present for us. This year, Boskovice is celebrating 800 years since its first written mention. We have long been a historical town, but now we have the official certificate,” said the mayor.

The competition is organized by the Association of Historical Towns of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, along with the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Regional Development, which reward the best utilization of grants from the Program for the Regeneration of Urban Heritage Reserves and Zones. In the program, funds from the state, municipality, and from property owners are pooled for repairs. Boskovice has been a finalist in the competition twice prior to this year's participation.

The municipal heritage zone of Boskovice was declared in 1990 and consists of three relatively independent parts: the town inside the walls, the castle area, and the former Jewish quarter. It thus occupies almost the entire area of the historical part of the town. It includes 37 immovable cultural monuments, the most significant being the castle, chateau, castle greenhouse, St. Jacob the Elder Church, town hall, synagogue, Jewish cemetery, and residence. There are 53 immovable cultural monuments across the entire territory of Boskovice. Unique in the Czech Republic is the group of buildings from the former Jewish ghetto, which is the second best-preserved example of this type in the country after the ghetto in Třebíč.

Last year, Boskovice repaired three monuments with a grant from the regeneration program amounting to 775,000 crowns. These included a Jewish house with a ritual bath, where the façade was restored, as well as another house in the Jewish quarter. At the castle, a wooden treadwheel at the well was restored. According to Boskovice's castle curator Milan Vaněrka, this is one of the two preserved treadmills in the country, with another similar one at Karlštejn. The Boskovice treadwheel dates back to around 1671. It was powered by one person pedaling, and period materials mention donkeys as well, according to the town's leadership.

"We are continuously repairing, not just last year; in the past year, we focused more on private monuments than those managed by the town. We are also trying to regulate advertising; we want to eliminate glaring illuminated signs, and we believe that it will be more pleasant for both the residents of the town and its visitors,” the mayor said today to ČTK.

In this year's final competition, other cities included Kroměříž, Prachatice, Frenštát pod Radhoštěm, Horažďovice, Hradec Králové, Kolín, Letohrad, Loket, Lipník nad Bečvou, Lomnice nad Popelkou, Prague 1, Telč, and Žatec. Among these regional winners, Loket and Telč received the Minister's Award for Local Development. They each receive a reward of 100,000 crowns, just like all the regional winners.

In the Czech Republic, there are about 40,000 immovable monuments and over forty heritage reserves and zones. Over the 30 years of the regeneration program's existence, 5.75 billion crowns have been used from the state budget, and combined with additional funds from municipalities and property owners, about 18,000 monuments have been restored at a cost of 14.6 billion crowns.

Last year, the program for the restoration of monuments provided 163 million crowns, similar to the first pandemic year of 2020. However, this year, according to representatives of the Ministry of Culture, only 112 million crowns are available. The Ministry manages eight monument programs, which had about 600 million crowns available in the last several years.

One of them, the program Support for the Restoration of Cultural Monuments through Municipalities with Extended Powers, was not opened by the Ministry of Culture this year due to budget cuts. The Ministry says that it is only suspended, and property owners could apply for funding in some other programs. In recent years, approximately 140 million crowns have been taken from the program annually, for which around 700 monuments were always restored. The largest recipient of funds from this program is the church, whose entities account for about half of the money.